Price changes are not significantly influenced by difficulty changes. However, difficulty changes are significantly influenced by price changes.

If price followed difficulty, then we could all make ourselves rich merely by agreeing to increase difficulty tomorrow by 10,000,000x. Think what the price would be!!!

Except that difficulty isn't determined by agreement.

Given the popular idea that difficulty follows price, I think that in order to estimate the BTC value at the end of the year, we must first extrapolate the difficulty at the end of the year and determine what price a Bitcoin would have to be to support it.

Price changes are not significantly influenced by difficulty changes. However, difficulty changes are significantly influenced by price changes.

If price followed difficulty, then we could all make ourselves rich merely by agreeing to increase difficulty tomorrow by 10,000,000x. Think what the price would be!!!

Except that difficulty isn't determined by agreement.

Given the popular idea that difficulty follows price, I think that in order to estimate the BTC value at the end of the year, we must first extrapolate the difficulty at the end of the year and determine what price a Bitcoin would have to be to support it.

By definition, it's impossible to predict the effect and use that to calculate a prediction of the cause.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

I'm sure we'll see the day where it is no longer necessary to always think of the exchange rates because the Bitcoin economy has grown large enough so that there's hardly ever the need to exchange them for fiat currencies.

It sure won't be end of 2011 though - so my bet for this one is 36-45: two more rallies and a correction afterwards.

By then the Euro, if it's still in existence, will probably be in even more dire straits than it is now (never mind Greece, Portugal and Italy will be seeking bailouts and Ireland will probably have withdrawn from the Euro altogether), the US will most likely have defaulted and/or will have come up with more QE, making the $ even weaker and prices will be through the roof... unless you use bitcoin, which will probably be more on par with precious metals, which will be worth tens of thousands/oz by then (and that could just be silver).

People will be using paper money to make fires to keep warm and old men will be offering BJs on street corners for a satoshi to get a bite to eat.